Edit Edge Solutions is a company that specializes in helping political candidates and small businesses improve their online presence, and is headed up by Elizabeth Dagostino, who’s spent over 15 years working on political campaigns at all levels of government.

(And as always, a shout-out to my mom, who regularly copy edits my blog. As always, I appreciate when people point out my typos!)

Hey! So I’m just home from a weekend at Philly’s Wizard World Comic Con, which I fully intend to do an entry on later, but for now here are two pieces I’ve written recently which you may enjoy reading.

The first is a piece that I wrote last Tuesday about John Krakauer’s latest book, Missoula: Rape and Injustice in a College Town. A friend of mine (from Missoula) brought the book to my attention, and when Krakauer came to Missoula to answer to critics offended by the book, she organized a group to support both his book (which unmasks the failures of a legal system that finds it easier to believe rapists than the survivors of their crimes) and survivors themselves. Go check it out to find out more about the hashtag #MissoulaBlue, and why you might want to support it. (And a shout-out to my friend Madelyn for pointing me in the direction of SkirtCollective.com – what a fab site!)

The second is actually a blog by a friend of a friend, Jason Mical, where he quotes some of my thoughts on Black Widow, Age of Ulton, and the feminism of Joss Whedon. It’s over on his blog, so click here.

And finally, I’ve been doing a lot of painting lately, and the featured image for this blog is a close-up of one of them. It and others are for sale on Etsy, if you’re interested in checking that out.

If you’ve been here for a while, you’ll remember contributing writer Matthew Lyons from his yearly film analysis, “That Said…”. Today, he’s delivering his take on the current fiasco surrounding this year’s Hugo Awards and the legitimacy of industry accolades.

Slaughtering The Sacred Cow:The Hugo Awards, Sad Puppies, and Our Current SFF Atmosphere of Total Shitbirdery

By Matthew Lyons

In 1996, Nick Cave wrote a letter to MTV, thanking them for their support and politely asking them to withdraw his name from competition for “Best Male Artist” in their annual Video Awards, citing the fickle nature of his muse and his own desire to avoid visiting “the realms inhabited by those who would reduce things to mere measuring” upon his art.

“I am in competition with no-one,” he said. His art was his own, independent of some tawdry award that lacked prestige and debased his artistic vision. It was a brave thing, and the right thing to do, given the situation.

Remember this. We’ll come back to it.

The current, drama-filled saga of how the Sad Puppies so successfully gamed the Hugo Awards has been well-documented by men and women who are far better writers and reporters than I, so I’ll spare you yet another three or four pages telling you what you already know. Still, some context is woefully necessary; so let’s do a quick sum up:

Socially and politically conservative voting blocs operating under the collective groupname Sad Puppies successfully gamed the Hugo Awards this year, securing three of the five Best Novel nominations, all five Best Novella nominations.

This isn’t exactly a stop-inclusivity-in-its-tracks thing, but it’s not exactly not: two of the SP’s most loudly championed authors have gone on record as supporting a certain non-inclusive online hate group, and as this whole fervor seems to be centered around resistance to inclusiveness, no matter what certain people may say to the contrary.

They’ve been trying to game the system for three years, and only now have they really succeeded in making a real, visible impact.

Everyone’s shitting their pants about it.

The question I want to ask is, why? Why do we go out of our way to act surprised and outraged when people do this shit? They’ve been trying to get this over on the Hugos for three fucking years. So they finally succeeded. Big shock.

Look at it critically, friends: you’ve had these people banging at the walls of your so-called sacred institution for three years and you act all aghast and shocked when they finally break through?

Please.

You do realize that all we’re doing by acting this way is legitimizing it, right?

Honestly, I’m really asking – do you understand that?

Why put up just a big stupid stink about it? Is it because the Hugos are an institution?

They’re only an institution because we treat them like they are. Fifty years of tradition is one thing, but those fifty years only carry the weight we assign them. The voting only happens at Worldcon because we all sort of, kind of agree that it should. Prestige is a concept of perception, and if you don’t like people bloc voting, fine. Fuck them. You don’t have to sit there and take it. Have another ceremony and give out another award. Have the nominations at DragonCon or something, develop special categories for whatever art form you like. Get weird with it, fuck, make it a party. No one says the Hugos are the only game in town. Stop treating them like they are.

But still we’re outraged. A noted, publicly avowed homophobe got three nominations in the Best Novella category? So what? No one says that nomination has to mean a fucking thing. It only means as much as we all think it should mean. Everybody just needs to fuck off the end of everybody else’s dick.

The stupid, ugly truth is that they’re well within their rights to vote bloc. That needs to be said. They can do that. The system as it exists in its current form is perfectly accommodating of that sort of thing. It’s not wrong, it’s just kind of a dick move. Nobody’s disputing that, not even the folks behind Sad Puppies.

And yeah, it’s an easy thing to say If you don’t like it, don’t pay attention. Don’t let it affect you. You know what, though? The people that these Sad Puppy assholes are rallying against get that shit time and time again. “Ignore the haters?” Fuck you. These assholes have made themselves impossible to ignore. Pay attention to what they do and how they do it. Beat them at their own game or go play your own. They’re going to keep making the same moves over and over and over, expecting shit to change. Last time I checked, that’s the definition of something.

Don’t ignore them, but maybe be reasonable with your expectations of people. Because motherfuckers are always going to do dumb motherfucker shit. The poorly behaved kid in class is pretty much always going to shout “LOOK AT ME!!” before pulling his pants down so everyone looks at his dick. The best thing you can do in that situation is not fall for that fucking trick. Stop coddling needy people who insist on throwing public tantrums. Stop legitimizing them by acting like they’re a bigger deal than they are. We all know you have a dick, Trevor. Nobody’s impressed. Just sit down and listen to Miss Wallace talk about long division, the rest of us are trying to learn here.

You might not be able to ignore them, but you sure as hell can delegitimize the thing they keep trying to stick in your face.

That brings me back to Mr. Cave’s refusal:

Perhaps, if this were a better world, the authors who aren’t part of the Sad Puppies’ slate would politely but firmly withdraw their names and works from consideration in protest. Wouldn’t that be a fucking revelation? If this is how they’re going to run the Hugos, maybe you don’t want that sort of recognition.

I mean, it’s nice to be honored for your art, but do you really want to be honored by an award system run by these people? Again: seriously, I’m asking.

If the answer’s Yes, great, carry on, have fun. Seriously. I don’t begrudge anybody the pursuit of recognition for their art. Really, I don’t. People are allowed to art and live and believe however the fuck they want. I just reserve the right to not pay attention if your methods make you a shitbird.

But if the answer’s No, then just why in the fuck do you insist on playing by their rules? As far as I can tell, the Sad Puppies have been nothing but clear and vocal about what their aims were, and they kept their promises. You think they won’t do it again next year? Or the year after that? It finally worked, after all. Why would we count out a repeat performance?

All I’m driving at here is maybe we all need to take a step back and consider what’s important. Is it the recognition of your peers, and the public? Or is it that fancy laurel seal your publisher gets to stamp on your reprints, that cute little tag you get to stick in your Twitter bio: Hugo Award Winning Author/Novel/Tweeter/Whatever. Consider why this matters to you, because you need to know that the Sad Puppies sure as fuck have.

And if you decide you don’t want to compete with their behavior and tactics? Then maybe consider taking your name out of the running. Consider taking some of the widespread prestige away from the awards. Delegitimize them. Just like engaging with these sorts of dicks on any other platform, the only way to win is not to play. We can all agree that the Hugos got hijacked, and we as a community would rather our awards be about recognition and community than tradition and prestige. The Bill Schuckley’s Backyard Barbecue Awards would carry just as much weight as the Hugos if we all decided they did. Probably even more, because there would be barbecue involved.

Let ‘em have the Hugos if they want them so bad. But if the ship’s been taken by mutiny, nobody’s making you sail with them. There’s enough ocean for everyone here, and plenty of able and like-minded sailors to help you build yourself a new ship. An awesome one. With flames painted on the side and a bejeweled Santa Muerte for the figurehead. And a sweet sound system playing nothing but The Clash. Everybody loves The Clash.

Abandon ship. Let the barbarians have the temple. Take the sacred cow out back and put a fuckin’ bolt through its holy fuckin’ head for steak dinner. If it’s not working, nobody says you have to keep it.

These awards only ever meant what we wanted them to mean, after all.

Matthew Lyons can be found listening to Tool records and old Bill Hicks routines while scorning basically everything and everyone on Twitter at @goddamnlyons. He occasionally writes fiction that is somewhat less pissed off than this guest post.

Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love ThemBy Christopher Durang
Directed by Thomas LaChiusaSubversive Theatre Company

Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them by Christoper Durang, has a plot that unfolds – at first – quite neatly. A young woman (Felicity, played by Andrea Andolina) wakes up in bed with a man (Zamir, played by Michael Votta) who she doesn’t know. Who, as far as she can tell, she’s married by accident. As the action develops, it begins to take a strange veer away from reality, heading into an absurd – yet frighteningly possible – world.

Feicity is, throughout the first act, constrained by the barely-restrained violence of combating Alpha males Leonard (her father, played by Victor Morales) and her new husband Zamir. Her mother Luella (Christopher Standart) has disassociated from the world, relying on absent-minded discussion of Broadway hits (Wicked, A Chorus Line) and is at odds with her daughter’s desire to tackle problems in the here and now. Namely, the problem of Zamir. He might be a danger. Or a terrorist. He’s already shown some tendencies toward violence – if not physical, yet, the certainly verbal – and while Felicity wants her parents’ help in getting an annulment, she also doesn’t want Zamir hurt. It’s a pretty morally admirable decision, given Zamir’s actions towards her early on. Still, one cheers a little when he and Leonard stand off. The delicious whiff of mutually-assured destruction is in the air.

The play strikes the same cheery, sick satirical chords as something like Torben Betts’ The Unconquered, or (if I’m giving his an even darker comparison) Sarah Kane’s Blasted (if Blasted were played for laughs without any on-stage violence). Some cultural force has warped our male leads, and one almost hopes the dystopia of the outside world is bad enough to justify the chill that runs through Durang’s script when it comes to his character’s brutality. One suspects that world might be reality, while hoping that isn’t the case.

Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them is a funhouse-mirror post-9/11 dark comedy. The metaphors for punishment without trial, racial profiling and next-generation “patriots” (the kind who take selfies flanked by flags and guns and government conspiracy theories) and domestic violence are present. It asks us, as viewers: how does a person cope with all that? Can we, as society, stand our ground and demand the ability to effect change (Felicity’s stance, in the first act), or disassociate into a disengaged enjoyment of our Marxian opiate of choice?

Luella, we see, has chosen the latter. While her husband waxes poetic about “Father Knows Best,” exploring the taste of calling his daughter the pet names from the kids in the classic TV show, Luella wears matching floral house dresses and insists on lighthearted conversation about the Theatre and French Toast. While she develops into an ally for Felicity as the play moves on, one can never be sure of when Luella’s small-chat fog may be sliced open by razor lucidity.

As for Leonard, everything we hear about his contact with the government? We hear it from him, or from one of his co-conspirators. In other words, it’s not hard to imagine that his Shadow world is, just like Luella’s also turtles all the way down. It might as well be self-contained. If Luella has floated away, maybe Leonard and his fellow nutjobs aren’t far behind.

If so, then what can be made of the final movement of the script, where Felicity’s compassion for Zamir – a man who has threatened and intimidated her – allows her to finally wrest away control of the situation’s swiftly deteriorating violence? She takes charge and the axis of Durang’s play starts to twist. A voice that’s been speaking to the audience throughout the play – Becky Globus, who also takes on several other roles – smashes through the 4th wall, and Felicity wills a feat of metatextual narrative timetravel. Her drive to change what’s happened drags the whole cast, including a pornographic priest (James Cichocki) and one of Leonard’s whackadoo comrades (Mike Seitz), back to a point before the play even started: the night Felicity and Zamir meet.

Conjured back to their ground zero, Felicity searches for a way in which the best aspects of herself and Zamir can be together – while also setting clear and entirely reasonable boundaries about what she wants as the end result: a world where things turn out differently. She directs the conversation carefully, laying out boundaries and guidelines, until she’s coached both herself and Zamir to what might be their “best aspect”. Zamir wonders if this even leaves him as the same same person, but Felicity’s insistence carries the day. Have they truly time-traveled, and will they now create a better future? Or has Felicity just experienced just had a disassociative snap, her mind creating a false reality to protect her from the world’s harsh truths? Has Felicity just found her delusional opium?

That I’m left with questions like these (and more) is a testament to the quality of Durang’s script, Thomas LaChiusa’s direction, and the cast’s ability to seamlessly integrate the two. Subversive’s production is tight and focused, an achievement for a show gets farther “out there” than normal. It’s easy for a play that toys so much with fantasy and reality (including metatextually) to drift aimlessly, but Why Torture Is Wrong…keeps its feet on the ground. And that makes a huge amount of difference in its ability to hold the audience over the course of two hours, as well in its ability to spark thought afterwards.

While John Kennedy and Michael Lodick’s set doesn’t quite evoke the luxury the script indicates, it’s unclear if that’s because the wealth isn’t translating physically, or if – like Zamir’s insistence on being somehow Irish – it’s yet another place where character’s perceptions and reality diverge.

Why Torture Is Wrong… is at the Subversive Theatre in Buffalo, New York through April 12, 2015, and I hope you make the time to see it.

Early on in dealing with the back injury that laid me low last year, I realized there were going to be a good number of prescription medication bottles floating around my apartment. I couldn’t stand the idea of throwing them all away. Thinking of the sad state of American medical care, I thought, “There’s got to be some kind of art project in this.”

I thought my chance had come last Halloween, when my friend and I did a joint costume at a science-themed Halloween party. She was “old medicine” (Victorian dress and a bottle of “snake oil,” a.k.a. whisky) and I was “new medicine” (a fluorescent orange t-shirt with a billion empty prescription bottles hot-glued on) and the whole thing was pretty hilarious.

After the party, though, I still couldn’t bring myself to throw away all those little orange bottles. So I threw them in a storage container and figured, sooner or later I’d find the reason I was hanging onto them.

That reason turned up in my Facebook feed the other day. A friend posted a plea from a group called The Malawi Project, asking that people clean and donate their old medicine bottles to help provide safe and clean medication storage to the people of Malawi.

Earlier tonight, I started cleaning my old medicine bottles. It took two and a half hours, but I boiled, scraped and cleaned each bottle (the remnants of glue were particularly annoying). It wasn’t fast, but after a while I got into a rhythm, and at the end I had a full box of medicine bottles that I’m going to post out to the Malawi project this week.

I know a lot of people who take regular medication, and while it’s a little time consuming, this is such a great way to help others and keep plastic out of landfills. Set up your laptop, start up a show you enjoy, and presto – a few hours later, you’ll have done something to help others in a really concrete way. And if you do, leave a note below – and help spread the word!

I’ve been focusing on some writing projects (more on that later, so make sure to subscribe to the blog with the submission box at right so you don’t miss it!), so apologies for the lack of updates the last few weeks. The following is a friend’s response to a practically medieval article about how women can change themselves to be the “perfect”girlfriend. I hope you enjoy it!

“A Reponse to ’21 Ways to Be The Perfect Girlfriend For Your Guy'”By Peter Randall

1. Remember that we fancy you NO MATTER.

If you are dressed in a tracksuit and have make-up streaming down your face from when we argued last night, we fancy you. If you are dressed as a duck and have actual poo on your face, we still fancy you. Although maybe get the poo off. The point is, we find you attractive physically because of who you are much more than what you look like – imagine if that wasn’t mutual? We would have no chance. So yeah. Let the mud stay in your hair for a few days. Who cares. We still think you are the most beautiful woman in the world.

2. Remember that your smell is the hottest smell.

Perfume is great and everything, but the best smell is you straight out of bed in the morning.

3. Keep nagging and complaining

We are pretty rubbish. As the great Receivers of the Patriarchal Advantage, we are used to having our own way, having things done for us and everyone agreeing with us. Keep working at us. Don’t let us get complacent or turn into typical misogynist arseholes. Nag at us continually until we grow up or you have had enough and you leave us.

4. Don’t say anything you don’t mean

Don’t go all gooey if you don’t feel like it, just because you think we might need some man-couragement. We are adults (most of us) and we need to deal with it.

5. Don’t worry about asking us stuff

Saying “do I look fat?” is not annoying. We don’t think you’re fat. We think you are perfect. We wouldn’t change you for the world. We are in a relationship because we are a team, and if you need that help then you will get it.

6. Remember we are men and therefore jealous

If we get jealous, it’s 99 times out of a 100 not anything you have actually done wrong. Our engines run on testosterone, which makes us ‘brave’ and shit but also makes us jealous and angry and grumpy and all the other annoying stuff we are. So remember that although we might need to be reminded that we are the only guy for you, we should also be trying to CALM THE F*CK DOWN and be normal.

7. Don’t feel like you have to like our friends

Our friends are not us and so you might not like them. And that is fine. Do we like all your friends? Probably not truth be told. Does it matter? Does it f*ck.

8. Don’t do stuff in the bedroom just for us

If you get a kick out of something because we do, then that’s cool – but putting yourself through something for us and thinking about when it’s over? Not cool. For anyone. We aren’t actually interested in dating a pornstar. We are illogical. Men always want someone who knows what to do in the bedroom and then they get jealous because they wonder how their partner learned all that. IT MAKES NO SENSE. DO NOT WORRY. Do what you want to, for yourself, for us, for both parties. It is fun.

9. Never cook. Get takeaway.

Cooking is something that we have to do in our twenties because our metabolisms have slowed and now we are fat. But please, let’s get pizza just this one time.

10. Love is not in the details. Love is in the functionality of the everyday existence of our prostituted lives.

Now we are all working for “the man”. Our great victory is not in receiving little presents but loving each other as strongly as we do in a hate-fuelled world. If you can come home from respective shitty days at work, smile and laugh, it’s good. No one needs “a small token”. Big ones are fine.

11. Do not say thank you for thank yous, we will become evil.

If you show your appreciation every time we get off our hairy arses and actually do something for you, we would end up only being nice to you because we expect something back. Just take it if we are nice, and move on. We don’t need any more spoonfeeding than society already gives us.

12. “Stroke his ego”

Nope.

13. Don’t make us feel like we have to “be the man” in a relationship.

My girlfriend earns more than me. All year round. Does this make me not feel like a man? Nope, still got a cock and balls. Still feel like a man. My girlfriend is far more intelligent than me, and wins most debates hand down. Still feel like a man. My girlfriend knows her way around Central London better than me. Still feel like a man. The list goes on. Ultimately I feel like a man because I am a man and there isn’t really much else to it. I would still “feel like a man” in the relationship if I was in a relationship with another man. Because, biologically, I am a man.

14. “You are partners, not enemies”

Oh yeah? You try holding on to those covers at night. You try getting the last chocolate out of the box, or picking which side of the bed you want. My girlfriend is constantly my enemy. And I love her for it.

15. Have a life and Passion.

Or, in other words, be a human being.

16. Be better than all of his ex’s combined.

Wow. Way to totally dehumanise everyone else involved. Ultimately, most people’s ex’s and current partner will have some things in common because they have that person in common. They would probably be besties in another life. Well, maybe some of them. Be better than all of them combined? At what? Playstation? They are ex’s because they weren’t compatible, or they cheated, or they got cheated on, or they moved on, or your partner was a dick to them or something. Jesus Christ. Not because they weren’t “better”. They are PEOPLE. Christ. Just… yeah.

17. Do be a menace

You know what? It aint normal to not know where your partner is for an evening. Because you talk. So even if he says “going to the pub with some mates” like he doesn’t want to say who the mates are, it is perfectly normal to ask who they are. Or where he is going. It’s called conversation. And also, earlier on, there was that whole “give him a reason to trust you by not flirting or hanging out with other guys” and then now it’s all “just try and trust him if yo get all up in his grille he’ll just snog someone else” I mean fuck off.

18. Having a pleasing personality – OR BE HUMAN

“A woman with a pleasing personality puts your pleasure first”. What the actual fuck. Seriously. I can’t even take the piss out of this. Seriously.

19. Take him for granted

He loves you. You don’t need to be on your toes. You watch a ‘ton of tv’? Well, to be fair, you did that anyway, just in secret. ‘Got fat’? Great, more of my favourite person to love.

20. “work out regularly”

Yeah, please don’t get heart disease and die, work out a normal amount so you don’t die. What, you’re working out for me? Why? So you don’t die? No? Because “you’ll be the perfect girlfriend in my (his) mind”? Yeah, you sound MENTAL.

21. Don’t worry about being feminine, because you have all the right bits and we fancied you for some reason anyway

You know what? I don’t need to explain why this is ridiculous. It is madness. It is terrible. It is all kinds of shit.

Guest blogger Peter Randall also writes poetry, which can be viewed on his website at http://poemobile.com/.